Team:BrownStanfordPrinctn/Collaborations
DTU BioBuilders
Over the course of the 2019 iGEM season we were in contact with the team from Technical University of Denmark. As members of their team are experts on fungal systems, we reached out to seek advice on our S. cerevisiae cell-free system.
The DTU Biobuilders developed software over the summer to generate synthesizable promoters of different strengths and complying with the standards of a user’s choice, which are based on genome data for a specific organism and its own taxonomic group. They provided us with the code and a detailed instruction manual on how to use and best practices when it came to their software. We performed the process for our S. cerevisiae organisms used to create our cell lysate to generate variants of existing native promoters.
The communication between the Astropharmacy and DTU Biobuilders great to share ideas about our project. In the future, we potentially have the newfound ability to quickly develop promoters with DTU's software is vital to streamline our process in developing plasmids for specific drug expression in cell-free.
generate your own promoters With DTU's Software.
Team member's laptop window as they test run software for DTU.
UC Santa Cruz
This summer we met with the UC Santa Cruz iGEM team in order to exchange information about our projects, get feedback on the challenges we were actively facing, and share solutions to the problems we had already solved. Interestingly, members of the UC Santa Cruz team told us that they had very closely considered a project similar to ours (small-scale drug production utilizing microfluidics). They subsequently had a lot of interesting feedback to give on various aspects of our broad-natured project, including on-chip purification techniques and designs that they had considered before they transitioned their work to focus on the preservation of the Newcastle Vaccine.
We also practiced our presentations and exchanged feedback on improving our presentational skills as well as content and design. Finally, we discussed how we planned to tackle the various requirements necessary to do well at the iGEM Jamboree. As it turns out, our teams have had two very different approaches in terms of dividing up work amongst team members. Generally, it was extremely helpful to gain additional feedback from the lens of another iGEM team, which operates in a totally different way from ours.
The Astropharamcy team meets with UC Santa Cruz (plus a friendly dog)!
iGEM UFSCar São Carlos
We were able to collaborate with iGEM UFSCar São Carlos this summer, in order to mutually learn more about the regulations surrounding GMO experimentation in space and in the atmosphere.
Our team had planned to construct a stratospheric probe this summer, in order to simulate space-like conditions (which the Astropharmacy will ultimately be operated in). The São Carlos team also decided to construct a stratospheric probe, but first wanted to learn more about the regulations surrounding high-altitude/in-space GMO experimentation, both in Brazil and around the world. In order to learn about regulations in the United States, they reached out to us, as our team was based at a NASA center.
As we reached out to various officials to determine which regulations governed this area of research, we learned quickly that it was not at all well defined. We contacted EPA officers and various NASA employees working on biological research payloads, who all seemed unsure of if any such regulations exist.
Eventually, we were able to talk to Cassie Conley, the former NASA Planetary Protection Officer, who told us definitively that biological experimentation in space is definitely a regulatory gray area.
“I am aware that this is an area of active concern for the biosafety/biosecurity community, because the US has no regulations at all on what happens with biology in space -- there's a clear policy gap because, disregarding all the possible biology in the universe that we don't know about, we certainly do know that Earth organisms can be harmful to humans and our activities.” - Cassie Conley
Another interesting piece of information came from NASA’s Antonio J. Ricco, Lead Technologist for the BioSentinel Mission. Dr. Ricco told us in a Skype interview that during his time at NASA, he has flown C. elegans on high-altitude balloons without any legal issues. He also was able to tell us that the potential for biological hazard is evaluated on a case-by-case basis by NASA. However, he was unsure of who is directly responsible for evaluating, or what criteria they use for evaluation.
The research that the collaboration stimulated was vital to both parties. We had never considered that a HAB (high-altitude balloon) carrying genetically modified organisms could be subject to different laws than an ordinary HAB, and the São Carlos team was able to benefit from our proximity to experts on these types of regulations. Additionally, the São Carlos team shared with us their collection of similar pieces of legislation from around the world.
Though we had to decide against constructing a probe this year (due to time-constraints), this information will be invaluable both for our team in the upcoming years and for any iGEM team internationally that wants to develop a stratospheric probe for testing their project. Additionally, because biological experimentation in the atmosphere/space is such a gray regulatory area (in the USA), considering how other countries legislate similar matters is crucial to ensure that the Astropharmacy will not present any biological hazards while it operates in space.
SoundBio iGEM
During our experimentation of different protein substrates in our paper microfluidics subproject, we decided to try bacterial cellulose to bind our cellulose binding domain, to explore the binding affinity with a bacterial, as opposed to plant, cellulose source. We were able to procure K. rhaeticus - produced bacterial cellulose from the SoundBio iGEM team in Seattle, Washington, a team the focused on the production of bacterial cellulose.